


Dust and Bones

by 7PhoenixAshes



Category: Mononoke, Mushishi
Genre: Case Fic, Drabble Sequence, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2015-08-09
Packaged: 2018-01-05 14:47:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1095235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/7PhoenixAshes/pseuds/7PhoenixAshes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Mushi-shi and a medicine seller take refuge in a remote mountain village—a village whose inhabitants are vanishing one by one into the night, and where a horror of the villagers' own making waits in the valley below.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MyDaroga](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyDaroga/gifts).



> We've only ever found one crossover between these two fandoms (Branewurms excellent "Tokikui Hebi," so this fic came about because we thought there needed to be more.
> 
> Self-imposed fic rules:  
> (1) Most of the fic must be written in 100-word drabbles.  
> (2) Non-drabble sections must be rare, and must have word counts that are multiples of 100.  
> (3) To prevent the drabbles from becoming oddly-spaced paragraphs, five minutes must elapse between each drabble, or there must be a change in perspective.
> 
> Needless to say, this was the most time-consuming fic I've ever written.  
> Enjoy!

* * *

 

\- I -

The farmgirl who opens the door is younger than he expects, but she pulls him in out of the howling storm without a moment’s hesitation.

“It’s so very strange,” the girl, Kayo, says as Ginko sheds his coat and snow-encrusted boots. “So few travelers pass this way in winter that we go whole _months_ without seeing a new face. Yet tonight there are two of you!  At our very door! Oh, please, you must promise tell us stories of your journeys!”

“Of course” he replies with a smile.  “And your other visitor, who is he?”

“See for yourself,” says Kayo.

 

\- II -

The other traveler is waiting by the fire pit at the farmhouse’s heart. When Ginko sees him, his blood chills for a moment.

A kimono of gold and green and blue far too thin for the howling winds beyond the walls.  Clawlike nails, long pale hair.  A pallid face painted in thick lines of crimson and purple.

And his eyes—

Ginko has walked many roads and seen many strange and terrible things.  He has seen enough to know that this stranger’s eyes of stone and iron carry behind them the inhuman weight of centuries.

Ginko, too, knows not fear him.

 

\- III -

The farmer’s sallow-cheeked face lights up when Ginko pulls a bag of rice from his pack and presses it upon him as thanks for the night’s shelter.

“It’s been a hard winter,” he tells Ginko as his wife sets a pot to boil.  “Not near as bad as the famine twenty years back when we lost half the village.  But bad.”

“It’s even been awful for the animals in the woods,” adds Kayo.  “They’ve all left our mountain.  I haven’t seen as much as a bird or rabbit for weeks.”

A sense of unease begins to settle over Ginko’s shoulders.

 

\- IV -

“You’ve told this family you’re but a simple traveling peddler.  A medicine seller, a _kusuriuri_.  Who are you, really?”

 “Merely what I have said. No more.  No less.”

Ginko frowns.  “Both you and I know that isn’t true.  Who are you?  _What_ are you?”

The stranger’s lips draw back over unsettlingly sharp teeth.  “And what of you, my fellow traveler.  Who and what are you?”

“I am a Mushi-shi,” says Ginko.  “And I would prefer it if you didn’t avoid my questions.”

Kusuriuri regards him with unreadable eyes.  “Stay on this mountain, Mushi-shi, and you might soon learn the rest.”

 

\- V -

Ginko awakens in the night to find the farmhouse gray and shadow-filled. The storm has faded, leaving behind only a disquieting silence.

Beside him, the medicine seller’s bedroll lies untouched. Paper seals are pressed to each of the room’s four walls, and Kusuriuri stands at the center by the fire’s dimming embers. Watching. _Listening_.

 “It’s out there, isn’t it?” Ginko asks quietly, his words breaking the snow-muffled stillness. “Out in the dark.  The reason you came to this place.”

Kusuriuri does not reply.  There is no need for an answer.

In the morning, a child is missing from the village.

 

\- VI -

They come just after dawn.  Half the men in the town, it seems, and many of the women.  The door is wrenched open, and Ginko and the medicine seller are dragged from within and into the snow.

Ginko is unsurprised.  Peculiar happenings have always dogged his footsteps, and this will be neither the first nor last time he is blamed for the workings of Mushi and magic.

As the villagers bind their hands, he catches a glimpse of Kusuriuri’s undaunted face. This medicine seller, he thinks, is no stranger to such fear and suspicion. 

For once, Ginko is not alone.

 

\- VII -

The vanished child is called Ume.  She is but six years old.  She is said to have a sunshine smile for everyone she meets, and is fond of the small blue flowers that grow beside the river. 

Her parents had awakened in the night to find her missing from where she slept between them, her blankets sliced apart as if by knives.  They had searched, frantic, fearful, raising a desperate cry as they ran from door to door in the bone-cold hours before sunrise. 

Not a soul had seen her.  It was as though little Ume had been spirited away.

 

\- VIII -

Surprisingly, it is Kayo who defends the travelers.

“We heard nothing,” she proclaims, standing ankle-deep in the snow as she stares down the furious mob.  “We saw nothing.  You know how light a sleeper my mother is.  And my father lay beside the doorway.”

She puts her hands on her hips.  The crowd shrinks back from her righteous glare.

“Did you see tracks leading to our home?  Any signs at all?  And where do you think these fine gentlemen would keep a stolen child?  Their packs?  Their _pockets_?”

The villagers mutter of yokai and witchcraft, but cut them both free.

 

\- IX -

Since the townsfolk do not let him join the search parties, Ginko hunts instead for Mushi.

Little Ume’s house is full of them.  _Yumebai, Kareha no Nuno, Dojyousaji_ —all common, all harmless, the sort of Mushi that one could find living side-by-side with humans in half the houses in the land. Perhaps it had been too much to hope that the cause of her disappearance might still be lurking in some forgotten corner….

Three yellow motes slide soundlessly across the floor.  Ginko stoops, and scoops them into a glass vial.  He stoppers it, holds it to the light—

—and frowns.

 

\- X -

“ _Hidaruihokori_? “

Kayo turns the vial over in her hands, peering at it closely.  She cannot see the glowing Mushi inside, but believes Ginko when he speaks of them.

“Yes.  _Hidaruihokori_ ,  Hungering Dust.  It’s fairly rare.  I’ve heard of great swarms of them inhabiting the deepest woods, or the most remote mountains.  It… feeds on carrion.”

“It eats dead things? Ugh, gross!  But what was it doing in inside the potter’s house?  Unless—“  Her eyes widen, and when she speaks, her words are thick with horror.  “You don’t think….little Ume…Is she…?”

Ginko bows his head.  “I do not know.”

 

\- XI -

_Form, Truth, and Regret._

The stranger circles the village, a single glittering scale balanced on one fingetip.  It stays impossibly upright, its bells hanging motionless.

One thing is certain—the Mononoke did not take the child.  His scales tell him that it is still waiting somewhere out in the forest.  Waiting.  Waiting for whom?

He cannot falter in his vigilance.  The Mushi-shi may perceive more than most mortals, but—as it always has been, and always must be—it will fall upon this stranger to defeat such evil.

And so, he must seek them out.

_The Form, Truth, and Regret._

\- XII -

At twilight, the searchers return.  They have found nothing.

Night falls. 

A bitter chill descends. 

Ume’s parents despair.

The villagers gather at the well in the morning.  Little hope remains, but they will continue searching nonetheless.

They are people of the mountain. 

They will keep searching, though all they now expect find is a tiny, frozen body curled amongst the rocks.

But then—

A cheer!

Wild exultation!

The child has returned!  By all the gods and spirits, the child has returned!

Little Ume is cold and very tired, but she wears her sunshine smile as she takes her mother’s hand.

 

\- XIII -

 “Where were you?  What happened?”

_I don’t know, Mama.  I woke up in the Vale of Bones.  I didn’t wander off, Mama, I promise!  Please don’t be angry!_

“The-the Vale of Bones?”

_Tomo takes me to play there sometimes.  She showed me the way through the cliffs._

“But how did you ever survive the night?  Why didn’t you return yesterday?”

_Yesterday?  I came straight home, Father, truly!_

The medicine seller cuts in.  “But what did you see in the Vale, child?  What found you, out in the dark?”

_Nothing .  Nothing.  Ume saw nothing._

She will not meet his eyes.

 

\- XIV -

If his long years as a Mushi-shi have taught Ginko anything, it’s that Mushi are beings of rules, of habits, of cycles.  The Mushi that stole the child from her bed in the heart of winter will strike again, of this he is certain.

He begs leave from his hosts to stay a few more nights.  The mountain passes may be snowed shut, he claims.  The medicine seller asks for nothing, but he also makes no move to depart.

They do not need to wait long.

On the morning following little Ume’s return, two men are missing from the village.

 

\- XV -

The Vale of Bones.  The surrounding wood.  The fringes of the rocky valleys beyond.  The villagers’ search parties scour them all, but each returns at dusk as empty-handed as when they sought the child.

Ginko, too, has again found little.  He shows Kayo the vial where he has trapped the yellow motes of _Hidaruihokori_ he found dancing beneath the eaves of both the vanished men’s homes.

“It’s got to mean something, doesn’t it?” she says, tilting her head.  “Why don’t you try asking _him_?  He seems like a person who would know about that kind of stuff.”

Ginko cannot disagree.

 

\- XVI -

_We wish to feed_

_We call to ourselves_

_We wish to feed_

The pieces of Hungering Dust sing to the stranger from their glass prison.  With clawed fingers he uncorks the top.  Pours them out.  Sets them free.

 “You can see them?” the Mushi-shi asks.  He does not sound surprised.

“Perhaps.”

“I’ve seen you patrolling the village.  What are you looking for, exactly?” The Mushi-shi draws a pipe of rolled paper from his pocket and lights one end.  

“I hunt for Truth.  Among other things.”

“The truth, huh?  And have you found it yet?”

“I shall.”

They lapse into silence.

 

\- XVII -

“Do you believe in Mononoke?”

The question is sudden.  Ginko exhales a thin plume of tobacco smoke and regards Kusuriuri carefully with his lone eye before answering. “Creatures formed from rage, fear and grief?  I’ve seen beings of light, of shadow, of the very essence of nature itself.  Entities made of human emotion don’t seem so very farfetched.”

He stubs out his cigarette.  “Will I need to believe in them before this is over?”

“If you venture into the forest with me tomorrow, into this Vale of Bones, then you must.”

“Then I shall make an effort to do so.”

 

\- XVIII -

Five of them go to search the Vale the next day.  An old farmer who knows the way.  Jiro, his son, a strapping lad of sixteen.  Ginko.  The Medicine Seller.  Kayo brings up the rear in her clunky sandals.

They descend down a steep, narrow path into the valley below the village, passing beneath great cliffs of granite that hang overhead like thunderclouds.

“Is this the only way into the Vale?” Ginko asks Kayo.

“Yeah.  There used to be a road, but it washed away in the floods before the big famine.”

The old farmer shudders.  “Dark times,” he says.

 

\- XIX -

To say the Vale lives up to its name would be a severe understatement.

The shadowed hollow is nearly the size of the village above, and is carpeted with a layer of bones deeper than Ginko is tall.  Within moments he spots the bleached skulls of a dozen different animals—from rabbits to deer to even wolves—all stripped of flesh and covered in a ghostly shroud of snow.

“Hulloooooo—“ the boy, Jiro, calls.  “Is anyone out there?  Can anyone hear me?”

A muffled echo is all that answers him.

“Well,” says Ginko.  “I suppose we should start looking.”

 

\- XX -

The sun drifts across the sky.  The five of them must search slowly, for the slick bones prove for treacherous footing. Each step brings with it the unnerving cracking of limbs, the snapping of ribs, the crunch of crushed spines. They search slowly, for they are not even sure, perhaps, of what they expect to find here.  The rest of the villagers had found no traces the day before, after all.

One thing is beyond doubt, however, Ginko thinks as he studies the jawbone of an enormous bear.  This place can be nothing but the very den of the _Hidaruihokori_.

 

\- XXI -

“It just seems silly.” Kayo says.

“How so?”

“You said these…Hidaruiwhatsits.  The Mushi.  One little speck finds something dead, right?  And then it calls the rest over.”

“It does.”

“And then the rest of the swarm comes by—like _ants_ —and they each take one itty-bitty mouthful—“

“Yes.”

“—And take it home to their nest and put the dead thing straight back together.”

“Yes.”

“And then the Hidaruwhatsits eat it _again_ , for real this time, leaving behind the bones.  _These_ bones.”

“Indeed.”

“Why not just eat it where they find it?”

“Mushi are rarely logical,” says Ginko, shrugging.

 

\- XXII -

Kayo much prefers the local legends about the Vale (something about a mountain god and a vanquished demon) and she relates them enthusiastically to Ginko during a rest.

Ginko listens with half an ear, his mind remaining fixed on the subject of the Hungering Dust.

From the evidence he’s seen, it seems probable that the _Hidaruihokori_ took both the child and the vanished men.  Perhaps mistaking their sleep for death—strange— the swam had stolen them away.  The Mushi must have soon realized their mistake, he supposes, and released the child.  But, then, what of the men? 

Where are they?

 

\- XXIII -

The stranger does not feel the bite of the frozen air. He pays no mind to the distrustful whispers of the old farmer and his boy. The groaning of the earthly remains beneath his feet holds no horror for him, nor do the thin cries of the spirits that still cling to some of them. 

The scale on his finger shifts an infinitesimal amount, the voices of the golden bells chiming softly before the device balances upright once more.

So the Mononoke has been here.  It has been to this place of bones.

The question is—

Where is it now?

 

\- XXIV -

“T’was pointless to come here,” grumbles the farmer.

“Oh, hush,” snaps Kayo.

Ginko is becoming inclined to agree with the old man.  Perhaps the _Hidaruihokori_ hadn’t taken the men after all.  They should have found them alive by now.

He’s developing a headache, too, and his ears are ringing.  Lower altitude, he thinks.

The boy, Jiro, suddenly screams. His father, Ginko, and Kayo scramble down a hill of hollow-eyed skulls to reach him.

Pale and trembling, Jiro points to the base of the neighboring pile.

There, they find what’s left of the missing men. 

They do not find their heads.

 

\- XXV -

With gloved fingers, Ginko delicately turns over a fleshless human limb.

“This,” he says softly, “was the work of the Mushi.  Most of it, at least.”

“Are you sure?” Kayo squeaks.

“Positive.  They’ve both been stripped of everything remotely edible, even the cartilage in their joints. Utterly devoured, but devoured without their clothing being removed—this one’s feet were eaten from inside his boots.  These skeletons, too, would have been scattered had anything larger touched them.”

Kayo’s face turns greenish.  “But what about their heads?  And their _necks_?  It’s like they were—“

“—Bitten off, “ finishes Ginko, grimly.

 

\- XXVI -

The girl retches into the snow over and over, but gathers herself at his approach.

“I said I’d be fi— oh, it’s you.”

“This is the first time you’ve seen death in this course, is it not?” asks the stranger.

“I’ve seen sickness, but nothing like… like….”

“You’re stronger than this,” he tells her.  “I’ve seen it in you before.  You are always strong enough to endure such darkness.”

“I—“ The girl-child looks at him, then glances away, blushing.

_Ah.   This again._

“Shall we see what else the Mushi-shi has found?” the stranger asks.

“Y-yes, let us,” says Kayo.

 

\- XXVII -

It…disturbs him.  Truly.

The first and little fingers of one of the men’s hands have been switched, each fragile phalange slotted against the corresponding metacarpal as though it had grown that way.  The other skeleton’s leg has a backwards tibia.

Everything Ginko’s ever read has said that _Hidaruihokori_ are always perfect at restoring their meals.  Always.  Little Ume, able to live again after being broken down into her very elements, is testament to that.

Faults in reassembly.  Stealing away the living instead of the dead… these Mushi must be going mad.

Never before has he heard of such a thing.

 

\- XXVIII -

“Oh, before I forget,” Kayo says to the stranger.  “I found this earlier, buried beneath the bones.”

She holds out a comb, an ornamental hair comb, a masterwork of inlaid mother-of-pearl and carved ivory.  Even chipped and darkened by time, it is still far too fine a thing for a humble village such as hers.

“Do you think it’s valuable?” Kayo asks him, overbrightly.

A residue of guilt and desperation— an echo of the voice that drew him to the mountain—bites at his hands as he closes her fingers over it.

 “It bought your people only ruin,” he replies.

 

\- XXIX -

They had brought along extra cloaks and blankets in hopes of giving the vanished men succor had they found them alive.  Now, those cloaks were to become litters to bear the men’s bones home, and the blankets the shrouds to cover them.

Ginko watches Kayo and the others wrap the bodies.  He is not of their village, not of their people, and so he waits apart.

The medicine seller, too, stands alone, intently watching the dark rim of the Vale.

“Is something wrong?” Ginko asks him.

Kusuriuri bares his fangs.  “We have lingered here too long, Mushi-shi.  _It is coming._ ”

 

\- XXX -

“But Father, the Mushi-shi said that the other monster had _flat_ teeth.  That it crushed their necks while they was still alive, before the Dust ate ‘em both—“

“Monsters?  Magic bugs we can’t see?  Pah!  Boy, it were a _bear_ that tore their heads off and ate them up, you mark my words.”

“Yes, father,” Jiro says obediently.  “But the medicine seller said—“

“Quiet!” the old farmer barks. “I didn’t raise you to believe old wives’ tales!”

Kayo rolls her eyes.

A paper seal, pressed to a tree on the far side of the Vale, burns to crimson.

 

\- XXXI -

The humans’ mortal remains are at last packed away.  The sun is setting, and the shadows of the surrounding pines reach into twilit valley like blackened, grasping fingers.

The stranger paces.

It is too soon.

 _Form and Truth and Regret._   He holds none of these, and yet the Mononoke draws near.  He can taste its approach on his very tongue now—old agony, old fear, and above all else –

Hunger.

His sword thrums in his hand.  Useless, useless.  If he knew but _one_ …

Form and Truth and Regret.  He holds none of these, and still the Mononoke draws ever nearer. 

 

\- XXXII -

 “Are you alright?” Ginko asks.  “Earlier, you were.…”

“I’m better now, I think,” Kayo replies.  She does not look at the sad little bundles strapped to the old farmer’s and Ginko’s backs.  “If it weren’t for my headache, though, this would feel like an awful dream.”

Ginko pats her shoulder awkwardly.  “I can offer you medicine powder for the headache, at least.”

“No need.  It’ll probably go away once my ears stop ringing.”

Jiro abruptly chimes in. “Huh, weird.  My ears are ringing too.”

“Mine as well,” says the farmer.

“And mine,” says Ginko, warily.

The medicine seller goes stone-still.

 

\- XXXIII -

_“It’s been a hard winter.  Not near as bad as the famine twenty years back when we lost half the village.  But bad.”_

_“…Leaving behind the bones.  These bones.”_

_“But what about their heads?  And their necks?  It’s like they were—“_

_“The Mushi-shi said that the other monster had flat teeth.  That it crushed their necks while they was still alive, before the Dust ate ‘em both—“_

_“—Bitten off, “_

_Old agony, old fear, and above all else –_

_“Huh, weird, my ears are ringing, too.”_

_“Mine as well.”_

_“And mine.”_

_—Hunger._

Ah.

So, _this_ is your form.

 

\- XXXIV -

 “All of you, get behind me.”

Ginko starts at the medicine seller’s sudden, harsh command.

“What?  Why?” asks Kayo.  The old farmer and his son look over in surprise.

“You cannot flee it.  _You_ cannot fight it.  The Mononoke is upon us.”  With a flourish, Kusuriuri draws a sheathed sword—bejeweled, ornate, and tipped with the red visage of a snarling beast—from his sleeve.

“I-I don’t understand.  What do you mean?  _What’s_ coming?”   Fear colors Kayo’s voice.

 The medicine seller’s painted lips twist into a thin smile.  “A _Gashadokuro_.”

The sword’s teeth snap together with a short, sharp click.

 

\- XXXV – XLIV -

_Hold fast, it is come!—_

The horror that bursts from the wood is like nothing Ginko has ever seen.  A colossal human skeleton, as tall as a pine tree, a behemoth of rotted yellow bones and burning eyes, it barrels down the mountain slope towards them with the merciless inexorability of a landslide.   The monster’s maw gapes black and wide, as though it were roaring, but Ginko cannot hear anything beyond the shrieking, _shrieking_ of the ringing in his ears.

He cannot speak.  He cannot move.  This thing before him is naught but death.

One great, fleshless hand reaches for him, its grasping fingers hooked into claws.  Should he close his eyes, Ginko wonders.  This is surely his end.

Blue.

Red.

Gold.

Green.

A whirl of bright fabric flashes before his eyes.  Kusuriuri’s sleeves, he thinks.  He can hear words over the ringing now, low words, harsh and ancient.  A hundred paper seals burst into being between himself and the oncoming nightmare, but they are merely a thin barrier, as flimsy as a screen of flower petals trying to hold back an oncoming storm.

The reaching skeletal hand slams into the wall of seals with a crash and a shower of red sparks. A smell like heated metal fills Ginko’s nose, masking the stench of decay that emanates from the creature.

The shield holds.

The monster—no, the Mononoke, the _Gashadokuro—_ throws back it’s skull and howls, and Ginko realizes that he can hear it now, that the ringing in his ears has receded, that he can _breathe_ again.

Kayo is pressed to his side, her arms slung around his waist and his arm curled protectively over the back of her head.  The old farmer and his boy are huddled together a bare step behind, clutching at each other with a strength bestowed by terror.

And there, betwixt them all and the ravening horror, stands the medicine seller.

“How-how long can you hold it off?” Ginko asks of him.  Ginko’s mouth is dust dry—nothing he has studied, nothing he has ever faced before, could have prepared him to stand against this Mononoke.  No Mushi he has ever encountered has felt this rage-filled, this vengeful, this intent on bloodshed.  His arts and tools will not save him here.

“Not long,” Kusuriuri says.  His sword arm is extended towards the floating seal barrier.  It is already shaking with strain.

“Can you defeat it?”

“With the Sword of Exorcism sheathed, I cannot.  And even if the sword were drawn, the Mononoke’s destruction is no certainty.”

Howling in fury, the _Gashadokuro_ lunges forward, its strike rebounding off the barrier as it did before.  The medicine seller shudders, and a trickle of blood flows down his hand.

“What are you waiting for, then?” Kayo shrieks.  “If you can fight it, draw your sword!”

“I cannot.”  The _Gashadokuro_ attacks again, this time pounding at the wall of seals with its massive bony fists.  Another— thicker—pulse of blood pours from the medicine seller’s hand, and when Kusuriuri speaks, his voice is tight with strain.  “For the Sword to be unsheathed, conditions must be met.  The Mononoke’s Form, Truth, and Regret must be present.  We hold its Form already—the _Gashadokuro_ stands before us in its true shape.  But Truth and Regret are still obscured –“

The Mononoke surges forward against the barrier once more, and Kusuriuri staggers as though he had taken the blow to his own body. A rivulet of blood begins to flow from the corner of his mouth, the sharp red drops falling from the edge of his jaw into the snow.

“If you do not wish to die here,” the medicine seller chokes out, “You must tell me of this Truth and Regret!”

The old farmer’s son weeps into his father’s chest as the _Gashadokuro_ redoubles its assault.  Kusuriuri shudders with its every strike, the floating paper seals—one by one—burning to ash and disappearing into nothingness.  The shield will not hold for long, Ginko thinks in despair.

“I don’t understand!” wails Kayo.  “What do you want from us?”

 “Truth is the natural state of all things,” the medicine seller answers, “and Regret is ever-present in men’s hearts.  A _Gashadokuro_ is born from humans who have been improperly buried, oft from those fallen in battle or died of starvation.  Who was it that bore a grudge against your village, a grudge so deep that he seeks retribution even after his death?  Whose bones did your people abandon in this Vale to rot?  SPEAK!”

The old farmer raises his head.  “It cannot be,” he whispers.  “It cannot—“

There is a sound like a thousand panes of glass breaking.  The remaining paper seals burst into dust.  The medicine seller crumples to the ground—whether dead or unconscious, Ginko cannot tell—blood streaming from his eyes and ears.

The barrier has fallen.

The ringing returns, impossibly loud.  Kayo is screaming, but he cannot hear her, but he can feel the wind of the _Gashadokuro’s_ skeletal hand as it reaches—

—past them, to close around the farmer’s body.  Ginko watches as the Mononoke tears the old man from his son, watches as it raises him to its, gaping, lipless maw.  The man’s mouth is open, as though he were crying out in the purest terror, but Ginko cannot hear him, cannot hear the sickening crunch as the _Gashadokuro_ closes its teeth over the man’s neck.

The old farmer’s headless form drops into the snow.  The Mononoke lowers its great skull, and Ginko meets its gaze for a moment.  There is fire in its empty eye sockets.  Fire and pain.

And then the _Gashadokuro_ is turning, _turning_ , crawling up the side of slope of the valley on fleshless hands and knees.  Within the space of a dozen heartbeats it has vanished completely into the surrounding forest.

The ringing fades with it, and soon the Vale of Bones is silent but for the sound of Jiro’s sobs as he weeps over his father’s broken body.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kanji spellings of the Mushi in this chapter:
> 
> 饑い埃 - Hidaruihokori - Hungry/Starving Dust  
> 夢灰 - Yumebai - Dream Ash  
> 枯れ葉の布 - Kareha no Nuno - Cloth of Dead Leaves  
> 土壌匙 - Dojyousaji - Soilspoon
> 
> If I've misspelled/mistranslated anything, please let me know. I only took a semester of Japanese in college, so I'm well aware I'm the furthest thing from fluent.


	2. Chapter 2

\- XLV -

In the waning of the next half moon, thirteen more villagers died.

Old men.  Young men.  Sisters.  Mothers.

Twelve were carried into the dark by the Hungering Dust.  The thirteenth, an old woman, had set out alone into the twilight seeking her unmarried son, whom had vanished the night before.  Ginko had entreated her to stay, but the son was the woman’s only family, and so she could not heed his words. 

The villagers found mother and son the following morning in the Vale, a sad pair of headless corpses, their fleshless arms reaching for each other in death.

 

\- XLVI -

_“Leave him,” Ginko says, and he knows his words are harsh._

_The boy, Jiro, clutches his father’s shoulders and says nothing.  Unseen to his eyes, yellow motes of_ _Hidaruihokori have already begun to feast upon the old farmer’s body._

_“Leave him,” Ginko repeats.  “We must return to the village before that… the Mononoke returns.”_

_Jiro glares at him, his gaze bloodshot with grief. “You would deny my father his funeral rites, yet you would carry that mere peddler’s corpse back up the mountain?”_

_“He is not dead,” says Ginko.  “He must not be, for none but he can save you.”_

 

\- XLVI -

Still, there were a few survivors.

Besides little Ume, six villagers were found alive in the Vale the morning following their disappearances.  All of them were children, Ginko notes, and he thinks that it must be more than coincidence.

The only child to die— as recounted by her weeping, frostbite-blackened twin— had perished in the bitter cold before the Dust devoured her.

Each surviving child said they had seen the _Gashadokuro_.  That it had appeared before them, eyes flaming, and seemed to pass judgment upon them, and that it had then retreated without doing harm.

Far beyond coincidence, Ginko thinks.

 

\- XLVII -

_Keep watch.  Wake one another at the first sign of trouble._

_Beware the Dust._

_These are the things Gino tells the people of the mountain when he ascends from the Vale, Kusuriuri’s body— light, far too light— over his shoulder._

_But the villagers there do not trust him, despite Jiro’s bloodstained clothes and Kayo’s fantastic tale.  Monsters and magic are things to be whispered about over fires, or warded against; these people are but of fields and earth and stone._

_And so they do not heed him, and the Dust claims two more lives that night._

 

\- XLVIII -

“There’s something wrong with my son,” the woman says.  “His face is strange.  The gods gave him back to me after the Dust took ‘im, but they didn’t give him back _right_.”

“The whole world is backwards,” the boy says, miserably.

“Alright, I’ll examine him” agrees Ginko.

The child seems healthy, and unwounded by his ordeal.

It is not until Ginko listens to his chest does he realize what the _Hidaruihokori_ had done.

The boy’s heart beats on the opposite side of his body—

The Dust had returned him reversed, as though he were his own reflection in a mirror.

 

\- XLIX -

_Ginko consults every book and scroll he carries.  He sends letters by Uro cocoon to every fellow Mushi-shi he can reach._

_Mononoke may be beyond him, but Mushi—_

_The Dust—_

_Every time, Ginko receives the same answer: a  Hidaruihokori swarm is a harmless oddity.   No one before has needed to drive one away._

_And so, Ginko must be the very first to discover how._

_Mushi are things of nature.  Most have a counter, a vulnerability, some means by which they may be defeated.  This Dust may have a weakness, too._

_Ginko prays he may discover it before it’s too late._

 

\- L -

The villagers build a ring of fire around their homes, burning their precious, meager supply of firewood.  They slick oil around the perimeters of their rooms, hoping to catch the passing Dust.  They light lanterns, hang talismans, chant spells, pray to their gods—all to no avail.

_Hidaruihokori_ , it seems, is not so easily deterred.

Ginko experiments with some newly-captured motes and a few scraps of dried meat.  He finds no answers, and can only offer suggestions from what he knows of Mushi lore.

The villagers try everything he says, but still they vanish one by one into the dark.

 

\- LI -

“Is she…?” Kayo asks, voice trembling.

Ginko shakes his head as he scrubs the blood from his hands.  “Nothing I could do.  Half her organs were already dissolved.”

Kayo seems to fold in on herself.  “Better she had been taken,” she whispers, “than to wake while they were still _eating_.”

“The _Gashadokuro_ would have been no more merciful than the Hungering Dust.  At least she was with her family here.”

Kayo does not raise her eyes. “We are all going to die, aren’t we?”

He grasps her shoulder.  His fingernails are still stained crimson, and it is but cold comfort.

 

\- LII -

Ultimately, all they can do is watch.

They sleep in shifts, now.  Those left awake must keep a vigilant eye for the first faint fading of their slumbering family or neighbors’ extremities, the first signs that the Dust has begun to feed.

It is easier for Ginko, for he alone can see the motes themselves.  But his eyes cannot be everywhere, and even he must eventually sleep.  And like the villagers, even he does not know whether he will wake in the morning in his own bed—or in the very maw of the _Gashadokuro_ of the Vale of Bones.

 

\- LIII -

The stolen children continue to survive, but now they all come back _wrong_.

One boy will never walk again.  His feet are misshapen lumps of flesh, the muscles and bones mixed together beneath his skin.

The living twin girl is missing an entire arm.  The Dust had gifted it instead to the sister whom had died of exposure.

How much longer will it be, Ginko wonders, until the mad _Hidaruihokori_ reassembles one of the villagers inside-out?  How much longer until the Dust no longer needs the _Gashadokuro_ to make it corpses to devour?

_These people are running out of time._

 

\- LIV -

“It’s no good,” announces the carpenter’s son, sweeping off his ice-rimed cloak.  “The southern pass is snowed shut.  And to the north—avalanche."

His face is grim, and marked with grief.  So too, are the faces of the rest of the villagers crowded tightly around the fire in the headman’s home.

“So we are trapped,” says the village elder.  “This is our end.”  There is despair written into every line of his withered skin. 

He turns to Ginko.

“Please,” he says.

“Please, is there nothing more you can do?”

For a long moment, Ginko is silent.  “Perhaps,” he replies.  “Perhaps.”

 

\- LV -

_The stranger floats in the void—_

_Unmoving, a fixed star in a swiftly -spinning universe._

_Flying faster than thought, a darting sparrow in a frozen sky._

_The severed scarlet threads that bound him to his flesh twine around him like the hair of a drowned woman.  One shouts a faint echo of a whisper of pain; the Hungering Dust has come to feed on his mortal shell again._

_His Otherself speaks a word and the golden motes flee, singing songs of terror._

_The stranger will wake soon.  The stranger will wake within eternity._

_All moments are one and the same._

 

\- LVI -

“What do you call something neither asleep nor dead?”

“Is that supposed to be a riddle?” asks Kayo, matching her stride to his longer one as they pass amongst the snow-shrouded houses.

“No time for riddles,” says Ginko.  “I’m merely preparing to disregard reason. “

His steps slightly falter.

 “Mushi have rules.  You can learn their secrets.  Predict them, to a point.  But this business of Mononoke, that is part of a realm of which I know little.  And I don’t care for it”

“I understand, I think.”

“Still,” Ginko says, “I will see this done, no matter the price.”

 

\- LVII -

The stranger wakes in a darkened room, the taste of freely-given blood on his teeth.

The Mushi-shi sits beside him, regarding him impassively with his lone eye.  “I know not whether you’re a god or spirit, or something beyond my ken,” the human says.  “I do know, however, that you are all that stands between the people of this village and the horror below the mountain.”

A bandage, steeped in crimson, is wrapped around the man’s forearm.  “Did I guess wrong?” he asks.

The stranger’s tongue flicks a few stray drops from his painted lips. 

“Your offering… is most welcome.”

 

\- LVIII -

Ginko slides the door of the medicine seller’s hut closed behind himself, and takes a deep breath of the frozen air.  The cut on his arm throbs.

Form and Truth and Regret.

_“And if I uncover the last two, the village will be saved?”_

_“There are never absolutes when it comes to exorcising Mononoke, Mushi-shi.  But if we do not find them, this village will most certainly be destroyed.”_

Form and Truth and Regret, thinks Ginko.

Kusuriuri has armed him with knowledge of these things, and so he must seek them out.

“Kayo,” he says aloud.  “Bring me a spade.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter wasn't quite complete yet, but visiting Mydaroga is fine occasion for an update.
> 
> And no, I don't think Kusuriuri is a vampire or anything. Blood is often representative of life/lifeforce, and headcannon says such a being wouldn't have pointy teeth for no reason.


	3. Chapter 3

* * *

 

\- LIX –

The people of this mountain told him they cremate their dead. The piled-stone cairns just off the eastern road say otherwise.

He has seen such graveyards all too often. They are the products of too many bodies in too short a time – victims of pestilence, bandits, or in this case, famine—and too much grief and too little strength left amongst the survivors to honor their neighbors according to custom. Instead, the dead receive shallow pit, an earthen covering, and later, perhaps, a stony monument.

Ginko presses his spade into the soil beside the nearest cairn, and begins to dig.

 

\- LX -

“I asked my father about the comb—the one I found in the Vale.”

Ginko pauses his work, and wipes the sweat from his brow. “Oh?”

“His lips went thin and white,” Kayo says, frowning. “That only happens when he’s very angry. Or afraid.”

The ground is frozen hard, barely yielding when Ginko sets the spade to it again.

“Keep asking around, please. It may be a matter of life and death.”

“You really think it’s important?”

“Kayo, that comb could feed your village for a month. No one throws away something so valuable unless they have something to hide.”

 

\- LXI -

The stranger raises his hand to the weak winter sunlight, watching the flutter of the imitation pulse in his wrist. He will be able to rise soon, he thinks. His Otherself murmurs agreement.

The Mushi-shi’s blood is stronger than he expected.

There is river of golden light refracted within its life force, and a promise of one-eyed darkness—

And memories—

A scraggly child who had lost his mother. A white-haired one who had lost his name. A man who chases myths and phantoms, who wears the clothes of an era not yet come to pass.

Yes, this blood is strong.

 

\- LXII -

It is as Ginko suspected.

The graves are empty. All of them.

Kayo gasps in horror. “Who could have done this?”

“The Mushi, Ginko replies. “It’s been an exceptionally hard winter. They’re hungrier than usual. They came to spirit away what little desiccated flesh they could find, and in doing so created the monster that now ravages your village.”

“What? How?”

“A Gashadokuro is born from corpses improperly buried, remember? Especially those of poor souls dead from starvation.”

He drops the spade. “A ghost from twenty years ago is behind all this. That is the Truth we’re seeking, I’d wager.”

 

\- LXIII -

Fear has a certain smell. Sharp and metallic. Coppery, like fresh blood.

The villagers filing past the stranger’s hut reek of it.

The Mushi-shi has called them all together, it would seem. He must mean to confront them, to draw out the truth and the Truth behind the Mononoke’s origin.

A useful man, this Mushi-shi.

All humans carry secrets within their souls; these villagers are no different. These people of the mountain must soon face the creature they birthed in the shameful darkness of their hearts—else, they will be destroyed.

Grinning, the stranger stands, and reaches for his sword.

 

\- LXIV – LXXIV -

“Let me tell you a story,” Ginko says.

The mass of villagers encircling the well – nearly every person on the mountain still left alive – stares back at him with dull eyes. Ginko’s work has oft brought him before such crowds, but on this day, though, Ginko does not come before these people as a Mushi-shi.

Today he stands as their accuser.

“Let me tell you a story,” Ginko begins again. “It is not a very good one, carved as it is from speculation and conjecture, but it is one nonetheless.

“This story is about a man—a traveler—who hailed from a place far beyond this mountain. I know it was a man because of the shape of the _Gashadokuro’s_ hips, and I know he was a traveler because he carried this—“

Ginko holds aloft the ivory comb. He has polished it, and its chipped inlay of mother-of-pearl shines in the sunlight, opalescent, alien against the drab huts and muddy streets.

“I do not know whether he was a wealthy man or merely a peddler. He may have been a thief or a bandit, though I suspect not. I know without a doubt, however, that this traveler was a good and just man, and it is the _Gashadokuro’s_ mercy—yes, its mercy—that tells me so.”

The crowd shifts uncomfortably. Strange shadows have begun spreading over some of the upturned faces, welling up like ink blotting through paper. Is it fear or guilt or anger, he wonders.

“This story,” Ginko continues, “is also about a village, a mountain village, one so remote that its nearest neighbors are two days walk away over high passes and narrow roads. Twenty years ago this man came to the village but never left again. He perished there, you see, and his bones remained in the valley at the mountain’s foot. I cannot tell you how and why the traveler died—but I can tell you what happened after.”

The shadowed faces are darker now, and more numerous.

Ginko presses on. “Around the time the traveler arrived, a great and terrible famine struck. Scores of the villagers died, and they were all of them buried in shallow graves upon the mountain. And then, twenty years later, in the depths of a harsh winter, their lonely remains were found and taken from their resting places.

“The villagers have long told tales of a demon that dwells in the valley below, one that steals away and devours all things made of dead flesh, whether it be meat or corpses or even leather. But, in truth, there is no such demon dwelling in the place the villagers call the Vale of Bones; instead, there is only the _Hidaruihokori_ , the Hungering Dust, a rare Mushi which feeds on carrion. It is this Dust which stole the famine’s victims from their graves, took them, piece by infinitesimal piece, into the Vale, reassembled the bodies again, and then consumed them at last, leaving behind only dry bones.

“But what are a few unburied human bones against the thousands already in the Vale? ‘Enough’ is the answer. Enough for them to bind together to form an Ayakashi. Enough to unite with the disquiet soul of the fallen traveler. Enough to become a Mononoke, a terrible _Gashadokuro_ that would one day devour the villagers’ families and neighbors.”

A few of the older men and women amongst the watching villagers have begun to quietly make their way towards edges of the crowd. These people have realized what Ginko is going to ask of them, and he is sure now that the dark expressions they wear are ones of guilt. He allows himself a slight prick of pride at this, for it means his conjectures are correct. Only a prick, however, for it is a grim matter.

“I said earlier that this was a poor story, and so indeed it is. I have asked many of you, and searched this village from end to end, but I still do not have a name for the unfortunate traveler buried beneath the mountain.   Are there any amongst you who could give me that name and complete the story? Is there one amongst you who would speak?”

Ginko looks out at the crowd. Some of the villagers stare back, sullenly defiant. Others merely peer up at him blankly. Many will not meet his eyes at all.

Their secrets are long buried, and pale and slimy with rot. He had not expected exhuming them to be easy, and so he forges ahead, undeterred.

“Seven of your children have now met the _Gashadokuro,”_ Ginko says, “and all seven have returned unharmed by it. The man whose bones lie in the Vale is transformed into a monster, but yet he spares those born after his death—those souls innocent of the ill fate that befell him.

“I spoke to you of the traveler’s mercy, and his honor. Is your silence how you repay such a just man? I offer you, too, a chance to save your people— _and all I ask is but for a name_.”

A long and heavy silence reigns over the crowd. Finally, slowly, Ume’s father steps forward. “I do not recall the traveler’s name, for I was but a boy then,” he says. “He was a peddler of trinkets. Ribbons. Incense. Combs.”

“And what became of this comb peddler?” Ginko asks. “How did he die?

Ume’s father licks his lips. “He—“

“Be silent!” barks the village elder, emerging from the crowd. The old man turns to Ginko.

“You are an outsider, Mushi-shi. You know nothing of the hardships our village has faced. You have no right to judge us.”

“It is not I whom judges you,” replies Ginko. “I merely seek to understand what has happened. It is the _Gashadokuro_ which weighs your past deeds, and finds them lacking.”

The elder’s face creases in anger. He opens his mouth to speak, but his words are lost when the air is rent by a woman’s scream.

 

\- LXXV -

A hundred thousand golden motes swirl and dance over snow, over root, over earth and stone and ice.

_We will eat well tonight after the work is done, when the moon is risen_ (they sing to themselves). _Soft meat, soft flesh. Fresh and young and sweet._

Once, they waited for the full stillness before they began their harvest. Now they pluck the fruit at half stillness. And, in time, when half stillness becomes full stillness, they feast.

_Soft meat and soft flesh_ (they sing).

Down into the valley, the golden motes dance. Down and down, unto their cathedral of bones.

 

\- LXXVI -

The screaming woman is the headman’s daughter, and there is a fine ivory comb in her hair.  

“My baby, my baby!” she wails, clutching an empty bundle of blankets. “I was holding him. I wasn’t watching him. He must have fallen asleep. The Dust has taken my baby!”

She grasps the Mushi-shi’s arm tightly. “Please, you must help me. He is too young. He will not survive the winter night. You must go into the Vale. Please, please, you must bring him back!”

“No, he will not,” says the stranger, striding forth from the crowd. “Your child is beyond saving.”


	4. Chapter 4

* * *

\- LXXVII -

“I’m going with you,” Kayo says. “I’m going with you into the Vale.”

“Are you sure?” The medicine seller asks. “Mononoke are unpredictable. This one so far has not harmed outsiders or young ones like yourself. But its rules are its own to break.”

Kayo makes a bitter face. “Someone has to show you two the way down the mountain. And everyone else is a _coward_.”

She had taken the revelation of her village’s past poorly. It will be long time, Ginko thinks, until she can look any of the adults in the eyes.

“Let’s go,” the girl-child says. “ _Hurry_.”

 

\- LXXVIII -

_Blue. Red. Gold. Green._

_The medicine seller’s sleeves are a vivid slash of color, almost too bright to look upon after half a month of snow-cloaked wood and bloodless faces._

_The villager’s countenances are wan no longer, but tinted with anger._

_The elder stands straight, and glares fiercely at Kusuriuri. “You cannot save child? Or, that you will not?”_

_“We will not,” Ginko answers instead. The headman’s daughter draws back from him in horror._

_Ginko reaches into his pocket for a cigarette, and wishes for the green and quiet places on the road far from the sound of human footsteps._

 

\- LXXIX -

Down the narrow, icy trail.

Through the stormcloud cliffs.  

There is haste in their tread as they descend.

Each time it has taken a prisoner, the Hungering Dust had rebuilt its captive during the night following its theft. Once he is restored, the tiny infant will be without shelter, without blanket, without the warmth of another human being.

If they do not reach him in time, the boy, crying all alone in the darkness, will surely freeze to death.

The wind-warped trees around them have already begun to fade into the grey of the cloudy twilight.

Night will fall soon.

 

\- LXXX -

_“Why?” a man’s voice calls bitterly from the crowd. “Why not go? You are outsiders here. The_ Gashadokuro _has no quarrel with you. You could bring our baby back—“_

_“There would be no point,” the medicine seller interrupts him. “If we fetched back the boy, then the Hungering Dust would soon claim another. And if we recovered that one, yet another would take his place in the Vale. Why should we save a village fated to die?”_

_Kusuriuri’s words are knife-edged, but Ginko sees the intent behind them. Kindness will not spare these people from oblivion._

_He steps forward._

 

\- LXXXI -

“It is bold of you to come with us,” the medicine seller says to Kayo. “But, then, you have always been bold.”

“Have we met before?” she asks.

“Thrice. Our first was when you were a servant in the house of a petty lord. Our second meeting was as passengers on a ship. And our third was upon a train.”

Kayo tilts her head. “You must have mistaken me for someone else. I never served in a lord’s house. And I’ve never seen the sea. And what, pray tell, is a ‘train’?”

“Who knows?” Kusuriuri says with a painted smile.

 

\- LXXXII –

_“Your village is beset by two dangers,” the Mushi-shi says. “One Mononoke, one Mushi. I have not yet determined how to drive away the_ Hidaruihokori _, but I have been informed of the way the_ Gashadokuro _may be defeated._

_“For a Mononoke to be exorcised,” he continues, “certain secrets must be brought to light. By keeping your silence, you only doom yourselves._

_“So, to you I say this—if you wish to save your people, then swallow your pride, bare your sins, and tell us what became of the comb-peddler buried amidst the bones!”_

_“Yes,” says the stranger. “Speak your Truth.”_

 

\- LXXXIII -

They reach the Vale.

There is yet no sign of the Dust, so the Mushi-shi and the girl settle down to await its emergence.

The stranger himself sweeps the edges of the hollow, pressing paper seals against the surrounding trees. Their ancient glyphs flicker when he releases them— a brighter red, a deeper black.

These new seals are inscribed with freely-given blood and the promise of one-eyed darkness. Form and Truth lend them power. They are far, far stronger than the ones he carried before.

This time, when the Mononoke comes—for surely, it shall— his barrier will not fall.

 

\- LXXXIV -

_The crowd mutters anxiously, but the village elder bows his head._

_“Very well,” he says. “It is as it was in your story. Twenty years ago, the comb-peddler came to this mountain. He did not survive the great famine, and we gave his bones to the demon in the Vale.”_

_“How did he die?” asks Ginko._

_The elder grimaces. “We slew him.”_

_“If every murder spawned a Mononoke, then I would never rest,” Kusuriuri says, his lips curling. With distain, perhaps. Or amusement. “Speak!”_

_“We had to kill him. We had to!” the old man cries. “You do not understand!”_

 

\- LXXXV -

“There’s something that’s been bothering me,” Ginko remarks to the medicine seller. “Why has this mountain’s _Hidaruihokori_ begun to feed upon the sleeping instead of only the dead? None of my research has shown one to ever have behaved like this before. You’ve traveled the roads and seen many a strange sight, I’m sure. What are your thoughts?”

“The explanation is simple.” Kusuriuri replies. “Mushi are of life. Not alive. But of _life_.

“Aye. That was one of the first things I learned, long ago.”

“And what is life, Mushi-shi,” the medicine seller says, “if not the ability to change?”

 

\- LXXXVI -

_“You do not understand!” echoes the carpenter’s second son._

_“We were starving to death! We had no choice!” weeps the old farmer’s widow._

_“He was an extra mouth to feed,” the village thatcher says, “when we could not even provide for our own.”_

_“Not one of us. Never one of us,” agrees the taller seamstress._

_“How very, very human,” the Mushi-shi observes dryly. “Turning on an outsider during a time of crisis.”_

_“We had no choice, then,” Kayo’s mother says. “But that does not mean we do not regret our deed.”_

_Says the stranger, “Very well. I have heard enough.”_

 

\- LXXXVII -

“The ability to adapt, to survive— “ Ginko looks troubled. “So you’re saying that the Dust, rather than face starvation or extinction, chose to become something new?

“Indeed. Such similar hardships were what divided the Mushi like stems and branches; they were all of the same root, once.”

“Oh? And how many years ago was that?

“Against the ages of the earth, a mere moment. In the counting of men— perhaps more.”

Ginko raises an eyebrow. “What did I say about avoiding my questions?”

Kusuriuri gestures in feigned innocence, and Ginko turns away.

He has been given much to ponder.

 

\- LXXXVIII -

_The medicine seller draws his sword from his sleeve, and holds it towards the crowd like a ward against evil._

_“The comb-peddler came to you as a guest. You sheltered him during the long dark of winter, but then cut him down to save your own skins,” he declares. “And now, twenty years later, you look to more outsiders to preserve you from a monster of your own making._

_He swings the sheathed blade to his side in a wide arc. The bells ring out. “This is your secret.” Kusuriuri says. “This is your Truth.”_

_The sword’s teeth click shut._

 

\- LXXXIX -

The _Hidaruihokori_ is dancing. It is beautiful.

The motes had trickled out from beneath the bones in the light of the risen moon, and now they swirl, glowing softly, like smoke and golden flame.

Kayo cannot bear to watch. She cannot see the Dust itself; instead, she sees only its gristly work—

—Veins and arteries spinning outwards like spider webs. Fragile bones crystallizing out of the nothingness between quivering purple viscera, soon wrapped swiftly in shredded banners of muscle. A fungus of cold skin sprouting up as the Dust regurgitates it, mouthful by mouthful—

So goes the child’s second birth.

 

\- XC -

“I think he’s alright,” the Mushi-shi says, draping another blanket over the slumbering infant.

“Thank the gods,” whispers the girl, Kayo.

“Breathing and heartbeat are normal. Limbs appear intact. Later, I can—“

“Did you find him? Did you find my baby?” calls an anxious voice. There is a woman standing at the edge of the Vale. It is the headman’s daughter. There is mud on the hem of her kimono and an ivory comb in her hair.

The infant’s eyes open, and the boy cries out in terror.

The scale on the stranger’s finger rocks gently, its bells swaying.

 

\- XCI -

“I couldn’t stay away,” the headman’s daughter says. “I had to make sure my baby was still alive—“

She reaches for the wailing infant in Ginko’s arms, but Ginko steps away from her.

“Go back to the village,” he says sharply. “The _Gashadokuro_ has ignored our passage, but you are old enough to draw it here to hunt you.”

“But I—“

A hundred silver bells ring out. The medicine seller looks down at the glittering scale in his hand.

“Go now. _Run_.” Ginko says.

“It is too late for that,” says Kusuriuri. “The Mononoke knows she is here.”

 

\- XCII -

For a short, bright moment, between one heartbeat and the next, the stranger does not understand.

His scales have all tilted. Not individually, as though the Mononoke prowled the outside of the barrier, but each in the same instant.

His seals, too, have all burned crimson as one. Such a thing is impossible. Had the _Gashadokuro_ broken through, a great many of them would have dissolved to ash. He would have felt it.

Such a thing is impossible.

Unless.

Unless the Mononoke was already within the barrier. Had always been within the barrier.

The heartbeat passes. The stranger understands.

_Below!_

\- XCIII -

Scattering shards of crushed bones, the _Gashadokuro_ bursts from the snow-covered ground of the Vale like a nightmare rising from a frozen sea. Up and up it stretches, its rotted yellow skeleton exuding a malevolence born of vengeance and aching hunger.

Ginko seizes Kayo’s wrist, tucks the child to his chest, and flees.

Glancing over his shoulder, he sees the Mononoke looking down upon him from high above, its eyes flaming. Judging. It looks at the infant, at Kayo, and the medicine seller.

It looks at the headman’s daughter, and at the ivory comb in her hair.

The _Gashadokuro_ reaches _—_

* * *

 


	5. Chapter 5

* * *

 

\- XCIV -

The nights are lengthening when the comb-peddler arrives on the mountain.

He wanders into the village, unannounced, just as he has at the close of every autumn for as long as anyone can remember. He is an old man, now, stooped and half-deaf.

The villagers greet him eagerly.   “How long will you stay?” they ask as they help him to his lodgings. “At least spend the winter with us this time. You are forever welcome here.”

“I couldn’t possibly impose. I’ll be off again as soon as I rest my old bones,” says the comb-peddler, just as he always does.

 

\- XCV -

To the unknowing eye, the comb-peddler is of little note.

He is but a wizened figure in ragged clothing, a fraying straw hat and sandals, and a grass cloak to keep out the rain. He carries a single square pack, stuffed full of such things as any poor merchant might carry– needles, stone and metal tools, thread, cloth, herbs.

So plain is his appearance that only the most desperate of bandits would likely accost him in the lawless wilds. This, however, is the peddler’s intent, for he has travelled many roads and learned long ago to keep his secrets hidden.

 

\- XCVI -

Carved stone ornaments, silk ribbons, rare spices, incense, and, of course, combs—

These are the things the peddler carries, too, sewn into the lining of his artfully tattered (but well-made) kimono. Sell one in a city and he can buy another and eat for a week. Sell two and he can eat for a month. The peddler has a tongue as silver as a coin and the guile to persuade other merchants to buy his wares. He might have easily opened a shop in a wealthy town, but he prefers quiet solitude of the woods.

And so, instead, he wanders.

 

\- XCVII -

On his second night in the village, the comb-peddler spreads his secret riches over a blanket in the headman’s home. The villagers exclaim over the gleaming enamel and lacquer and mother-of-pearl, but they are a poor people and have little use for pretty baubles they cannot eat. The news the peddler carries of the outside world—war, taxes, and tall black ships from the eastern sea—are of far greater value, as are the mundane supplies the peddler offers in thanks for his stay.

Still, the villagers understand the trust he has in them, and deeply do they treasure it.

 

\- XCVIII -

The children of the mountain adore the peddler, and follow him hither and thither like a string of noisy ducklings. He delights in their company and tells them stories of ogres and great lords and the simple farm folk whom outwit both. When the children play pretend at being the princes and princesses from his tales, he lets the headman’s daughter (for she is the headman’s daughter) choose an ivory comb and a red silk ribbon to wear in her hair.

“Make sure to give them back to me before I leave, child,” the peddler says.

“I will,” she promises.

 

\- XCIX -

“Why not stay a little longer?”

“There are many days of travel yet ahead before I reach the next town.   Winter waits for no man, even for one as old as I. I fear I must be on my way.”

“The roads from here to the pass are thick with mud. And it will likely rain again tomorrow. Please, it is only a short while more. Your health is dear to us, too.”

“Very well. If you insist, then I shall further avail myself of your hospitality.”

“It is no hardship. We are honored to have you beneath our roof.”

 

\- C -

For two dark days, the sky boils in the blackest fury. Rain falls in unceasing sheets. The wind howls like a thousand wounded beasts. Lightning cleaves the air, and the surrounding peaks shout back the echoes of the answering thunder.

When a side of the mountain tears away and rolls down the cliffs, taking with it a few huts and the valley road, the village elder prostrates himself before guardian god’s shrine to beg for salvation.

His people are granted no divine aid despite his incense and prayers. For another long day and another long night, the storm rages on.

 

\- CI -

The comb-peddler is old, but his shoulders and back still are strong. When a group of men climbs down the cliffs to search for survivors amidst the landslide’s rubble, the peddler joins them. It is he who finds the carpenter’s son still breathing in the wreckage of his house. It is he, too, who carries the boy back to the village above and delivers him into his grandfather’s arms.

The people of the mountain are strong as well. Already the peddler can see them beginning to dig out, to rebuild.

It will take more than a storm to break them.

 

\- CII -

On the heels of the rain arrives the snow.

It is early this winter, earlier than anyone can remember. Still, it is a gentle fall at first that does not trouble the villagers. There are homes to repair, and, since the landslide destroyed one of their communal storehouses, sacks of rice to redistribute.

After three days, the northern road is blocked by deep drifts.

After four, the way southwards is impassible as well.

When the sun finally emerges, the snow does not melt.

A week passes.

Then a month.

And so the villagers realize they are trapped upon their mountain.

 

\- CIII -

With numb fingers, the comb-peddler painstakingly picks through his meager pile of rice. To either side other men and women are doing the same. Each small grain must be inspected. Black and rotted go into one bowl, white and still edible into another.

The people here are used to the isolation of a hard winter and usually keep themselves well prepared. The storm, however, has ruined much of their supplies with water and earth.

As he takes another pitiful handful of rice to sort beneath the grey afternoon light, the comb-peddler cannot help but think—

_There will not be enough._

 

\- CIV -

The winter solstice comes and goes, and the villagers begin to starve.

The elderly and the infirm are the first to die; their bodies are buried in a shallow grave near the eastern road.

The remaining people of the mountain now move little and speak less. The children are the worst. Eyes sunken and bellies swollen with malnourishment, they huddle in the corners and cry and cry.

The villagers again plead with their god for aid. When he helps them not, they smash his shrine and offer sacrifices to the demon of the Vale instead.

It, too, does not answer.

 

\- CV -

Straw and tree bark and boiled bits of rope—

The villagers swallow anything they can to stave off the chewing, killing hunger.

They eat the comb-peddler’s spices, but it only makes them ill. A few desperate souls try to eat the black rice, but they soon die, their mouths festering.

The thatcher’s father breathes his last on a cloudless day. That night, the scent of cooking meat draws scores of people to his son’s home. Those who ask are given bowls of broth and chunks of roasted flesh.

The villagers speak no words of condemnation. There is only survival, now.

 

\- CVI -

All they can do is pray—and wait.

_Not my child_

An old woman dies. The village eats.

_Not my brother_

Divided amongst so many mouths, she is worth little sustenance.

_Please, not my daughter. She is too young_

The village waits. The village starves.

_Not my father_

Another dies. The village eats again.

_Not my mother_

They try to exhume the graves on the eastern road. The ground is like a casket of iron and will not yield its feast of corpses unto them.

_Spare him_

The village waits.

_Spare her_

The village starves.

_Spare me!_

The village eats.

 

\- CVII -

The comb-peddler finds nine grains of rice caught in the seams of his pack. Nine and only nine.

He cooks them secretly in an abandoned hut. Before he is done, he is discovered by the headman’s daughter.

The girl is bone-thin, her skin as pale as the ivory comb in her hair. The comb-peddler looks at her, and his heart breaks.

He gives her every grain.

The headman’s daughter is only a child and does not thank him. Instead of eating his gift, however, she slips home and feeds it to her ailing brother.

Thus, the comb-peddler’s fate is sealed.

 

\- CVIII -

“Where are you keeping it? Tell us now!”

“We saw the rice! You’re hoarding food!”

The comb-peddler thrashes in the icy mud. His ribs are cracked, his jaw broken.

“How dare you! Each day my family dies a little more, and yet—!”

“Where is it?”

“You monster, how could you—“

“ _Please_ ,” he gargles through a mouthful of pain and blood. “I never—“

“This is all your fault!”

“Give it to us!”

“You brought this curse to our village!”

“ _Have mercy!_ ” he begs.

“Not one of us. Never one of us.”

“Demon!”

“Monster!”

“Monster!”

They fall upon him.

 

\- CIX -

The villagers retire to their homes with the comb-peddler’s carved flesh warm in their bellies. In the morning they will wake hungry once more.

An hour before sunset, two strange men appear in the village center. They have come from the next town southwards, they say. They have dug a way through the mountain pass.

On their backs are packs full of rice. More of their people are coming behind them, they say, all bearing food. They owe this village a debt from hard winters long past, and have come at last to repay it.

The great famine is over.

 

\- CX -

If the village were saved by the demon of the Vale of Bones, as the Elder says, then it would be folly to deny it every remnant of the human it claimed as a sacrifice.

Accordingly, when the villagers bury the peddler’s remains in the Vale—a single picked skeleton amidst thousands—they inter with him his ribbons and incense and combs. Into the pit, too, they pour their guilt, all the stories of him they will never tell their children, and the prayers for his soul they will never say.

Only their memories, forever after unvoiced, will remain unentombed.

 

\- CXI -

_“So I see,” says the stranger. “Each of your bones was buried beneath the earth, but not a body is not merely bones. The flesh the people of the mountain stole from you and brought into themselves—blood, skin, and viscera, you seek to reclaim them all. You cannot leave this valley until you have taken back what was once yours and are made whole. That is why you hunt the villagers, but spare those too young to have partaken in your devouring.”_

_His sword’s teeth snap shut. “Your Regret”, the stranger says to the Mononoke. “I understand it now.”_

 

\- CXII -

The _Gashadokuro_ reaches –

The infant caught under Ginko’s arm flails in primitive terror, but Ginko dares not loosen his grip on Kayo’s wrist as he drags her towards the valley rim. Behind him, he can hear the headman’s daughter crying the desperate cry of rabbit caught in a wolf’s jaws. Bones crunch underfoot. The _Gashadokuro_ howls.

And then the world goes silent.

Kayo is frozen in midstride, and the child as motionless as stone in his hold. Yet, Ginko can still move. Does move. He turns, and looks back, and there beholds a sight beyond the understanding of mortal men.

 

\- CXIII -

The Sword of Exorcism screams its release and all the rest is easy.

The stranger plunges into the void (not so empty now, but filled with the brushstrokes of an old man’s memories) and his Otherself sweeps past him, heading for the thin surface of reality high above. As the scarlet markings bleed from the stranger’s face and the patterns fade from his sleeves, thick golden lines, glowing with power, bloom across the being’s dark skin.

“Strike true,” the stranger murmurs as he sinks, blank and colorless, into the deep.

The Other’s black eyes open, and it bares its teeth.

 

\- CXIV -

Chaos and darkness. Madness and light.

Shining threads writhe beneath the pale skin of Ginko’s arm. The bond of blood, he thinks. It must have carried him to this place.

Far below, the _Gashadokuro_ and the one who is and is not the Medicine Seller do battle. Jagged fragments of bone fly about them in a whirlwind. Needles of fear and shards of betrayal rain from the impossible sky.

Eyes flaming, the _Gashadokuro_ lunges forward, its maw gaping wide and hungry. The golden being thrusts forth its sword in reply, driving its blade upwards and into the Mononoke’s spectral heart.

 

\- CXV -

_“Wait!”_

_The comb-peddler looks down. Before him is the headman’s daughter, and in her hand is a fine ivory comb._

_“You remembered?_

_“I promised to give it back,” she replies. “Everyone else, they forgot you.   Or they wouldn’t talk about you. But I couldn’t forget, because I promised.”_

_He takes the comb from her and pats her head. “Thank you, child.”_

_“Can you stay?” she asks, her young face hopeful._

_“Winter waits for no man, even for one as old as I. I must be on my way.”_

_The comb-peddler shoulders his pack and steps out onto the mountain road._

 

\- CXVI -

Ginko stands across the threshold of Kayo’s family’s hut. He does not move aside.

“It isn’t over,” he says. “The _Gashadokuro_ is defeated, but these people are not safe.”

“The doings of Mushi are none of my concern,” Kusuriuri says, his narrowed eyes gray and ancient. He must be long used to slipping away in the aftermath.

“Unless it is stopped, the _Hidaruihokori_ may yet destroy this village. I’ve thought of a way to trap it, but I need your help.”

“Think of another. My duty is slaying Mononoke, and my task here is done.”

Ginko plays his last card.

 

\- CXVII -

The remaining people of the mountain gather as one around the village well.

There, they cheer the safe return of mother and child.

There, they weep for their young, returned twisted and mutilated by the demon.

There, they rejoice at the slaying of the vengeful horror in the Vale.

There, they mourn the losses of their families and friends.

Unseen to them, a thousand yellow motes twine about their ankles, the _Hidaruihokori_ adding its soundless songs to the voices above.

_Soft meat, soft flesh_ , sing the motes. _We call to ourselves. Sun sets and night descends. Soon, soon we feast._

 

\- CXVIII -

“You owe me,” the Mushi-shi says.

The stranger’s pointed teeth snap together in irritation. Blood debts are the worst. If not fulfilled, they grow legs and eyes and find you in the dark. Not so hard to kill, but still inconvenient.

However—

This one-eyed Mushi-shi has proved an intriguing creature. He has already inferred the stranger’s true nature, drawn out the villager’s poisoned Truth, and twice faced down the _Gashadokuro_. And it might be diverting to see the cage this human thinks might contain the Hungering Dust….

“Indeed, it is so,” the stranger says. “What would you ask of me?”

 

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies for the, er, nine month gap between chapters. Life and grad school applications (and for the last few weeks, grad school itself) got in the way.  
> I likely will not have much time to write in the near future (the program I'm in is brutal) but I can assure you that I *will* finish the last chapter as soon as I am able. I have poured far too much time and tears into this fic to give up writing it now.
> 
> Also, I can't believe I'm now past drabble number "C" (100). Egads.
> 
> EDIT: December 29, 2016  
> I'm still alive, folks! The final chapter is around two-thirds complete. I'll post it as soon as I am able.


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